


late nights

by infinitebees



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, drunken non-shenanigans, i hate tori
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 20:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5840242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitebees/pseuds/infinitebees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which cullen finds an unexpected friend in warden-commander tabris.</p>
<p>a quick little post-inquisition fic written for a good friend (vita lavellan is hers).</p>
            </blockquote>





	late nights

The candle is burning low by the time Cullen decides to take a break from his work – it’s been hours, he realizes suddenly. With a tired sigh he eases back in his chair, tilting his head so that he’s staring up at the ceiling. The work never ends, he thinks, and all his work these days is paperwork. Correspondences, requisitions, disbursement of income to the troops employed by the Inquisition. He knows Vita is waiting for him; she’s probably fallen asleep by now, especially given how she seems to be capable of sleeping anywhere, anytime. She, at least, is well-rested lately. If anyone deserves it, it’s her (unbidden, the events of the past few months come to his head and he presses the heels of his palms to his eyes as though he can push them away, as if he can pretend he didn’t almost lose her nine times over. It doesn’t work), with the weight of Thedas sitting heavy on her shoulders as it’s been. It’s part of the reason he’s taken some of her work to do himself, imitating her small, neat handwriting in an almost perfect forgery.

The rest of the reason, as always, is the nightmares.

His body has become a traitor, one whose hands shake and whose dreams startle him into waking in the dead of night, choking back a scream lest he wake the woman sleeping peacefully beside him (he knows she’d only want to help, she has in the past, held him and talked and sang to him until he slipped back under again, but the thought of burdening her has kept him from seeking her help since that first time. She’s got enough to deal with, he tells himself each time). Now he puts off sleep for as long as possible, staying up late into the night with some menial task or other, sometimes just reading whatever book Dorian’s recommended him this week. More often than not he’ll find himself dozing off with a book in his hand, only to startle awake when it slips from his grip. Only then does he venture back to his room; Vita will shift to accommodate him as though it were second nature, sleepily murmuring endearments.

He’s right about at the “dozing off at the war table” phase of his routine when a cool pair of hands cups his face and tilts his head back further; on instinct his hand darts out to reach the letter opener he’s left near a bottle of ink (which he spills as he does so) and he’s halfway to stabbing whomever’s come up behind him when he hears a quiet, _annoyingly_ familiar peal of laughter.

“Goodness me, is that any way to greet an old friend?” purrs Tabris, catching his hand at the wrist and gently opening his fingers around the blade so that it falls to the table with a dull _clunk_. “I know we haven’t been acquainted long, but one would think a commander of the famed Inquisition would follow a better policy than ‘stab first, ask questions later.’”

Cullen sighs and brushes her off, annoyed that he hadn’t sensed her coming. The woman has all the languid grace of a bloody cat, even heavily inebriated – which she is, and Cullen can tell by the smug, lop-sided grin on her face. “Warden-Commander,” he says, _trying_ to mask the exasperation in his tone, and _just_ succeeding. “I was told you had arrived here some days ago, but I haven’t yet had the opportunity to welcome you to Skyhold. Haven’t seen you around at all, actually, not since you got here.”

“Yeah, well.” The elf seats herself next to him uninvited, shrugging her shoulders to reveal an ill-concealed string of love bites trailing up to her jaw. “I’ve been dealing with business. Important Warden business. Simply couldn’t wait, you understand. By the way, if you ever wondered about all those rumors about the  Grey Wardens’ stamina –“

“I never have – “

“They’re all true. _Aaaaaanyway_ …” Here she swings her legs onto the table, slumping down in her chair. “I thought I might get some alone time with my _favorite_ Commander. Why, I haven’t seen you around since… Kirkwall, I suppose, before the whole business with, y’know.” Tabris mimes an explosion with her hands and makes an accompanying sound; Cullen grimaces. “Bit strange, that whole thing. I knew the man – quite well, actually – and he didn’t seem the type to blow up buildings. Templars, maybe, but you can hardly blame him for that one. Present company excluded, of course,” she adds. “Kind of.”

“I’m not a Templar anymore, actually. I’ll be staying on with the Inquisition for as long as it needs me.”

“You mean for as long as the _Inquisitor_ needs you,” Tabris grins, taking a swig of something from a flask before offering it out to him. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’ve gotten enough done for the night, may as well take some time to relax. I spent a good quarter of the Blight drunk, and we made it through that just fine.” And Cullen doesn’t wonder at that; the woman’s small, a little wisp of a thing, but she has a way of making herself _feel_ taller. There’s something in her eyes (well, one of them now, he thinks, his gaze flickering over and past the eyepatch) that commands respect, refuses to be denied. Even when she lets her guard slip, drunk and sloppily sprawled between her chair and the war table, she’s still as imposing a figure as ever. Perhaps that’s why he takes the flask from her, obliges her by taking a sip, then five more. It’s disgusting, whatever it is, but strong, and grudgingly he admits to himself that it might not hurt him to relax a bit.

He frowns, though, when she speaks again. “I know why you’re still awake, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Same reason I am.” When her words are met with wary confusion, Tabris smiles grimly and taps her head with her finger. “Sleeping’s no fun these days, is it?”

Cullen shudders. “It hasn’t been ever since the Circle,” he admits. “It’s worse without the lyrium. Everything is. But you…?” The woman has every reason to have nightmares, given all that she’s gone through (he doesn’t know much about her life before the Wardens, but he knows she hails from an alienage in Denerim so it couldn’t have been very good. Since then he can only imagine it’s gotten worse), but her admission to such a trouble surprises him given that she has a notorious tendency to talk as little about herself as possible.

“What they don’t tell you about being a Warden,” Tabris drawls, looking at him with her one good eye, “or I guess what they didn’t tell _me_ about being a Warden, is that you might never get a decent night’s sleep for as long as you live. That’s how they talk to you, y’see. The darkspawn, in your dreams. They’d stopped for a while after the Blight, but that Corypheus bloke must’ve brought ‘em back when he came round and I guess lately I’ve just been getting… echoes. I don’t really understand it, I just know I dread the nights more and more. How Alistair is able to sleep these days is beyond me, but I suppose I’m grateful at least one of us is.” She sighs and takes the flask back from him, taking a long sip.

“What?” She responds to his look of surprise with an indignant scowl, shaking the flask at him. “It’s been a long year, Commander. I take my pleasures where I find them.” Despite his disapproval Cullen takes the flask when it’s offered to him again.

“To long nights,” he says, and raises the flask to Tabris in a sardonic, half-hearted sort of toast.

“To drowning our nightmares in shitty alienage moonshine.”

For a while neither says anything, and then they are talking animatedly, loudly, their words often running together and becoming a language only the drunk can understand; they pass the flask back and forth until it’s empty, by which point they are drunk enough for the both of them to actually be _giggling_ , which is something neither of them ever does. _Ever_.

“Soooo.” Tabris is now leaning towards Cullen, most of her body on the War Table. “How’s things with our Herald?”

Cullen had already been quite flushed from drink; now he goes even redder, averting his gaze. He doesn’t know why just the thought of Vita still makes him so bloody _shy_ , but even at the mention of her his heart does this funny thing that feels sort of like a shout, and leaps into his throat. “Things are… very good,” he stammers, mussing his hair with his hand. “I don’t know why she chooses to be around me of all people, but I’m grateful, really.”

The elf snorts. “Oh, shut up. You know you’re pretty, and you may’ve been a Templar but if Lavellan tolerates you then you must be a good man.”

“You know her?”

“Not very well aside from when we ran into each other a few days ago,” she replies. “Other than that, I just know what Alistair has told me of her by letter. She’s not bad, for a Dalish. Glad things are going well, though. More for your sake than hers – you hurt her and I’ll make Kinloch look like a leisurely stroll through the forest. Elf solidarity and all that.”

Cullen looks at all five-foot-two of her and believes her completely.

“You two are good for each other, at any rate.  Balance is good. She reminds me a lot of my cousin back home, actually.” A faraway sort of look creeps into her eye, and Cullen feels as though these words aren’t meant for him. For whom they _are_ meant, he can’t rightly say; he just knows that this might not be something she would deign to tell him sober. But then, he could be wrong – Tabris is a difficult woman to read, and she likely takes great pride in that. Then the look disappears, quickly replaced by a suggestive grin. “Do I hear wedding bells in your future?”

Cullen Stanton Rutherford, former Knight-Commander of Kirkwall and famed Commander of the Inquisition, makes a very _dignified_ squawking sound as he nearly falls out of his chair. “I – why would you – I don’t know! Maker, I – Maybe?” Tabris seems to find his fumbling terribly amusing, for she’s practically shaking with laughter. Cullen scowls. “Well, I don’t know, ‘s just – just hard to imagine she’d say yes. I _am_ human, after all, and I know it’s rather… impolitic for humans and elves to marry.”

“Someone’s a coooooward.”

“Well, what about you and Alistair?” Cullen huffs, recovering. “It’s been ten bloody years and I don’t see a ring on _your_ finger.”

Tabris only gives a shrug in reply. “Last time I tried to get married, the entire guard of an estate died under _mysterious_ circumstances. The groom, too. Oh don’t give me that look, that last one wasn’t my fault. But I’m sure you can understand why I hesitate to repeat the experience.”

Huh. He’s learning new things about the Hero of Ferelden by the minute, and against his better judgment he finds himself developing a certain sort of respect for her.

“More importantly, though, have you guys done it on the War Table yet? Me an’ Alistair have. Riiiiiight on top of Orlais. That’ll show those blighters.” And then it’s gone.

Cullen stares. And then looks down at the table, where his hands rest, and he swears to the Maker he’s never recoiled from something as quickly as he does now. There’s another peal of laughter from Tabris, and Cullen waits hopefully for her to tell him she was just kidding. She doesn’t.

Instead she stands up and stretches noisily, running a hand through her rather tangled hair. “Well, Commander, it’s been fun, but I think I’m about ready for bed. Andraste’s left tit, I hate these bloody mountains; always so damned _cold_. Places like this you practically _need_ a warm body to sleep beside. S’pose I’m lucky I’ve got Alistair – he practically radiates body heat. I’ll be staying on here for about a month, so let’s do this again, yeah? Us Fereldans have got to stick together, after all. Especially traumatized Fereldans.”

Cullen is surprised to find himself smiling. Truth be told he hadn’t had many friends before he joined the Inquisition (funny how crisis tends to bring you to the people you’re supposed to be with), having not been well-liked at the Chantry in Ferelden and having been altogether (and perhaps rightfully) despised in Kirkwall; he’s always a little taken aback when he manages to find someone else who genuinely enjoys his company.

“I think I’d like that,” he says, and watches as her form retreats into the darkness of the corridor.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr @vvardentabris


End file.
